Nicole Kidman has thanked Jodie Foster for filling in for her in the 2002 film Panic Room when she was “having a mental breakdown.”
“There’s a misconception that actresses don’t get along or don’t like each other,” Foster, 61, told The Hollywood Reporter during a roundtable discussion with Kidman, Naomi Watts, Brie Larson, Jennifer Aniston, Anna Sawai and Sofia Vergara. “Nicole, I kind of took over the movie that you had to leave.”
Kidman responded, “Yes! Thank you. I was in such a bad place. I was like, ‘I’m having a mental breakdown.’ And Jodie stepped up for me, thank God.”
The 2002 thriller follows Foster and a young Kristen Stewart as his daughter, who are forced to hide in a panic room when an intruder breaks into their New York apartment.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Kidman had begun filming on the movie but had to pull out after suffering a serious knee injury while working on the 2001 musical “Moulin Rouge!”
She didn’t go into detail about why she felt “emotionally drained” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, but it was around the same time that her 11-year marriage to first husband Tom Cruise ended in 2001. She is now married to singer Keith Urban.
Earlier this year, she spoke about the impact her divorce had on her, even as her career reached new heights.
“I was struggling with a lot in my personal life, but my professional life was going well,” the 56-year-old told Dave Karger in his book “50 Oscar Nights,” published in January. “That happens, doesn’t it?”
According to People magazine, Kidman explained that she wasn’t thrilled after winning an Oscar for her role in 2003’s The Hours.
“So I literally walked [to the Vanity Fair party afterward]”I walked around feeling totally overwhelmed, emotional, shaking, not enjoying it,” Kidman recalled. “I almost felt bad, which is really ridiculous. I wish I’d had more fun.”
“Jodie came on and it was just amazing,” Kidman told Variety about Panic Room in 2022.
Kidman and Watts also spoke about their “40-year” friendship during the discussion, but the “Big Little Lies” actress said, “It didn’t start with acting.”
“No, it started in the pub,” Watts agreed.
Kidman detailed how emotionally challenging certain roles were, saying that she once threw a rock through a window at her house after a tough day filming “Big Little Lies.”
“The one who threw the stone [the door] “It was locked and I couldn’t get in,” she explained. “I’d never done anything like that in my life. [had a lot] I destroyed everything I had accumulated. It cost me a lot of money.
“And often times, you’re working 12- or 14-hour days for six months straight, and you don’t really have time to think, ‘I need to take care of myself.'”
She said she also had to take on lighter roles after appearing in the heartbreaking series “Expats.”
“After ‘The Expat,’ I was so out of sorts with my mental health that I ended up doing comedies and I was like, ‘This is not healthy,'” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think it’s a conversation we have as actors: taking care of your body so you can live as long as you’ve got on this earth, because it’s so hard mentally.”
